Quran Garden

Session 334

Chapter 3

Verses 12

Say to the disbelievers, ‘You will be defeated and driven together into Hell, a foul resting place.

(Chapter 3: Verse 12)

Allah instructs Prophet Muhammad, the conveyer of His message, to issue a warning to the disbelievers.  Who are these people? Are they the disbelievers of Quraysh? Maybe.  Are they the Jews of Medina who fought the Prophet? This is also possible.  In fact, the true warning is to all disbelievers.

Let’s take a moment to study the word ‘Say.’  It is a word that many verses of the Quran start with.  But why? We answer that the Quranic literary style is different from the speech you and I use daily.  Let me give you an example.  You say to your child: “Son, go to your uncle and say: my father will come to visit you tomorrow.”  So, your son goes to his uncle and says, "My father will visit you tomorrow."  Isn’t that what 99% of us would say? But if you want to be absolutely accurate and faithful to the message that you were entrusted with: you would go to your uncle and deliver the message as follows: “My father said: Say to your uncle that I will visit him tomorrow.”

Our beloved Muhammad is the trustworthy and the truthful.  These were the names Meccans gave him before the message of Islam.  So, when Muhammad become the Messenger of God, he, peace be upon him, delivered God’s message in the most authentic and accurate form exactly as he received it: 

Say to the disbelievers, ‘You will be defeated and driven together into Hell, a foul resting place.

It would have been sufficient for the Prophet to go to the disbelievers and say to them: ‘You will be defeated and driven together into hell.’  But, he peace be upon him, did not want to leave any room for doubt as to the source of the message.  Maybe someone would question whether this threat is from Muhammad or God.  Thus, by delivering the message accurately, the Prophet informed everyone that he was conveying a command from God.  He did not convey the gist of the message; rather He passed the entire text verbatim exactly as it was delivered to him by the Angel Gabriel. 

Say to the disbelievers, ‘You will be defeated and driven together into Hell, a foul resting place.

Here is another point to consider.  When Allah instructs the Prophet to convey a message to the disbelievers, he, peace be upon him, is sometimes addressed first, and then he is tasked with sharing the message.  Listen to the following verse:

Say to the faithless, if they relinquish faithlessness, what is already past shall be forgiven them. But if they revert, then the precedent of the ancients has already passed. (08:38)

99% of us would deliver this message as follows: ‘if you relinquish faithlessness, what is already past shall be forgiven you.’  But the verse states: ‘Say to the faithless, if they relinquish faithlessness, what is already past shall be forgiven them.’  This indicates that when the verse was revealed to Prophet Muhammad, the disbelievers were not present, so they were mentioned in the third person pronouns ‘they’ and ‘them.’  It is interesting to note that heavenly messages are sometimes addressed to the disbelievers in the third person, while in other occasions, such as the verse under study, the message is delivered in the second person. 

It is also interesting to consider the timing of the message: ‘‘you will be defeated and driven together into Hell.’  When was this message delivered to the disbelievers?  We answer that God revealed this verse when the Muslims were few in numbers and heavily persecuted in Mecca.  Every believer lived either under the protection of another or was forced to migrate to a safe place away from Mecca.  The logical question to ask is: How can a message promising defeat in this world and dire consequences in the Hereafter be delivered to a great political and military power by a group incapable of protecting itself?  For such a message to hold any weight, it can only come from the One who possesses absolute power, all knowledge, and has control over time, space and creation. 

Our beloved Muhammad conveyed God’s message, while the Muslims were in a state of severe weakness.  Moreover, once delivered, this message put a huge burden of proof against Islam.  In other words, if the weak Muslims did not prevail over the much stronger Quraysh, the Quran would have been proven inauthentic.  But, with God’s help, this matter came to fruition during the battle of Badr.

The verse under study was not the only one that threatened the disbelievers.  God says in another chapter:

Their forces will be routed, and they will turn tail and ?ee. (54:45)

When Omar ibn Al Khattab heard this verse in Mecca, he wondered loudly: “What army?” He knew that the Muslims were persecuted and could not safely assemble in a small group to worship, let alone put together a force to face Quraysh, the largest Army in Arabia.  But Prophet Muhammad was not talking about the means available to the believers; rather, he was talking about the Lord of the means who was supporting the message of Islam.  In a few short years, events came to prove the authenticity of God’s words: ‘Their forces will be routed and they will turn tail and ?ee.’ 

Thus, the battle of Badr should have been a wakeup call for the disbelievers.  Why? We answer that there are two warnings in the verse under study: the first was warning was of the disbeliever’s defeat in this world, and the second warning was of the gathering and punishment in hellfire in the Hereafter.  When, against all the odds, the Prophet’s first warning became evidently true in the battle Badr, the authenticity of the Prophet’s second warning about the Hereafter should have been taken more seriously.  The disbelievers' defeat in Badr confirmed that they would also be ‘driven together into Hell.’

Some scholars noted that the Jews of Medina who conspired against the Prophet were meant in the verse under study.  They did not think that Islam would prevail against Quraysh.  Some saw the Muslim’s victory as a sign of God’s support and believed in Muhammad, while others decided to wait for another battle.  We answer that the verse is general to all disbelievers, polytheists, and anyone who opposes God’s message. 

The phrase ‘resting place’ is translated from the Arabic origin ‘Mihad.’  It refers to a lined flattened surface that is comfortable for sitting, walking, and living.  In fact, a child’s cradle is called ‘Mahd.’ Here, the question that comes to mind: Is the word ‘Mihad’ appropriate for a place like Hellfire? We answer: yes it is because he who sits in a crib has no strength to leave or even move.  If an infant is uncomfortable in a crib, all he or she can do is cry for help.  If no one helps, the infant will remain in the crib forever.  Thus, the person whose resting place is hellfire has truly ended up in the most dreadful of resting places.